Revolution | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

RainyDayWoman said:

hmmm… GniknuS, lots of interesting ideas…give me a minute – 

 

I think there are a lot of ways to interpret “Revolution “… John himself didn't even really take a particular side in the matter, hence the whole “count me out/in” debacle (I tried to find the quote where he talks about this, but I haven't the time–I think it's on Dick Cavett…)

What I gather from the song is not that Johnny's promoting violent Revolution or any kind of fear-based whatever. In fact, quite the opposite:

“you say you want a Revolution /well you know/we all wanna change the world…” 

As I said earlier, 1968 was the peak of the 60s. The driving force behind that generation was social change. You have all these radical groups who all want peace, but they all demonstrate in their own special way. Some took a non-violent approach (sit-ins, for example) But a popular new approach was a “bringing the war home” strategy (look up The Weather Underground). What this entailed was bombing public buildings trying to stir people up into getting involved with the movement… The idea was that the old ways of doing things were not going to bring around social change and that a Revolution was needed, stat.

and then there's The Beatles… 

What I'm trying to say is that John was calling out the violent protesters, stating lyrically, with “Revolution ” to just calm down and “everything's gonna be alright” — its a peaceful song, y'know? Its really not a message that far off from “All You Need Is Love ” — “Revolution ” is AYNIL taken to a more complex level, thats all. 

Sure, I'm not saying that John was promoting a fear based or violent Revolution , but when asked about the song itself, he said things like we don't have to change all of society, just some of it in order to achieve any sort of Revolution , but I just disagree with that. Real Revolution isn't going to come with some bullshit change of electing a new president and expecting them to change anything. The only way presidents and politicians win elections is because of the money they receive for their campaigns from “anonymous” donors, so they are basically already selling out to the corporations before they are elected president, and if we're being honest about it, the corporations run our society, not the government. So I just think is that the only way to achieve real Revolution is to get as far away from the word Revolution as we can because I think the word Revolution implies the wrong message. Revolution is revolting against the powers that be, and it basically implies that violence is the key to achieve any type of real Revolution . So whether John meant that to be the message of the song is irrelevant because people will just hear the word Revolution and make their own assumption of what the song is meant for. I don't dislike the lyrics, I just don't like the label of Revolution being put on the song.

I think John has some incredible revolutionary songs like Working Class Hero and Isolation which have had far more impact on me personally because their messages have made me really think about my life. Working Class Hero is the perfect song about the machinery of being processed into the middle class and Isolation 's message is more true now than ever because of how isolated most of my generation is from one another because of how small our world is getting. So I just think that those songs are more revolutionary then Revolution is, but just because the song itself is called Revolution people expect it to have some profound answer in it and therefore regard it more highly than those other songs.

Sorry I've been rambling, but we just need a change in society. We need a cultural Revolution , a new Beatles to come and change the world with positivity rather than negativity.